All posts tagged ‘special effects’

The cast of Oz, the Great and Powerful assembled at Pasadena’s Langham Hotel to meet with media prior to the opening of the film. They talked about the process of making the film, particularly the technical aspects. Oz, the Great and Powerful presented a number of unique challenges, from the creation of fantastical CGI characters to the construction of an entire imaginary world.

One might assume that, like other recent films, this one takes place in an entirely computer-generated environment. Surprisingly, it doesn’t. Producer Joe Roth explains, “I think one of the misconceptions is that we were making a CGI film; we built seven full-size sets.” The decision to make the film this way was director Sam Raimi’s, Roth said. “It’s really the director’s choice. I had just done Alice in Wonderland with Tim Burton, who builds almost nothing, with the actors acting opposite tennis balls, and having a grand time doing it. I had no idea what he was doing. In this case, Sam wanted both a tactile version and a CG version; I thought it was incredibly helpful. You could come to the set and think that it wasn’t going to be a CG film at all.”

The actors also appreciated the constructed reality of physical sets. Mila Kunis (Theodora) said, “I actually got very lucky; James had the hard job with his part; I was surrounded with tangible sets and actual living beings for most of the film. My interactions were mostly with Rachel and with James and Michelle. We were given Munchkin City, we were given Glinda’s castle, and Whimsie Woods, the waterfall; so I was surrounded by actual tangible items. That being said, I was coming off another film where I was talking to a CGI character,” she say,s referring to the comedy Ted.

Aside from the environment, one of the larger challenges of the film involved two prominent characters, Finley the flying monkey and China Girl, a 14-inch-tall girl made of porcelain. In each case, the actors, Zach Braff and 13-year-old Joey King, performed their roles virtually, working from a recording booth adjacent to the soundstage, in order to interact with the cast.

“What was kind of cool about this was, it wasn’t all voice work,” Joey King exclaims, “Zach and I did it together; we were in a booth on the set, and they attached our facial expressions to the characters. It was something I’d never done before, and I’ve done a lot of voice work. I could see James and the actors on the monitor in my little booth, and they could hear me, because they had earpieces on.”

James Franco follows up, saying “there are a lot of things that we did that we would have done if Joey was playing a human character; she and Zach would be there for every scene, we’d block things out, talk about the dialog, and make sure that their characters were behaving and choreographed in ways that they, as actors, felt they should be.” In order to give the actors someone to visually relate to, and the animators some reference for the performance, the producers hired master puppeteer Philip Huber (Being John Malkovitch) to perform as China Girl. His puppeteering was then used as the basis for the final CGI version of the character.

“It was a marionette puppet, it had all these strings and wires and he knew what everything did” King says. “It was so cool, sometimes they weren’t able to use her, but it was so cool to see James and everyone act with her. We sometimes forgot it was a doll.”

“He was not only good at manipulating the doll; he also had an earpiece, so he was interpreting Joey’s performance,” Franco replies. “He would make the doll match Joey’s performance. He was so effective that Sam would give his directions directly to the doll.”

When King and Braff performed their roles in the on-set recording booth, video cameras captured their facial expressions, which the other actors were able to see and and react to via monitors on the set. The animators also used these recordings in creating the CGI characters, according to Braff. “Sam said ‘I really want the animators to go off your facial expressions,’” he said. “I was very conscious all the time, because there were these three video cameras usually on my face and body all the time, even when it wasn’t my shot. Usually when it’s not your take, you don’t have to do 100% always, but for me, I realized those cameras were on me all the time, so I really had to do it every single time as best as I could. And fortunately the animators really ran with what I did and animated my facial expressions.”

Sam Raimi concurs, elaborating, “the animators didn’t really run with what he did; usually it was the editor and myself, kind of slightly straying from what he did, and then trying to get back to it. Zach really is a great actor; he has real emotion, that’s why I didn’t want to do motion-capture,” he states, referring to the technique often used for characters like Gollum or the Hulk, in which dots are applied to the actor’s face, and his facial expressions are captured and applied to the character. “We didn’t want to do that,” Raimi says, “we wanted to capture the essence of what he had did. That’s why we asked for a human animator, so they could sit with the film and understand what that expression meant, then go to the character and animate that.”

“I thought it was going to be motion-capture when I first got the role,” Braff elaborates. “I remember seeing old Disney footage of animators studying deer while working on Bambi, and that’s what it reminded me of.”

Another character that required special treatment was the Wicked Witch of the West, which is the later incarnation of Kunis’ character. Describing the transformation of her character, she states, “half of it is special effects makeup; it took four hours to put on and an hour to take off. By the end of production, it was down to two-and-a-half hours to put on and an hour to take off, along with contact lenses.” She found the physical transformation liberating, saying, “I’ll tell you, for the first time ever in my career, putting on the costume and putting on the face mask, so to speak, pun intended, and putting on the contact lenses, truly did help me lose inhibition and allow me to just have fun and not concern myself with what I looked like or what people thought.”

Once she becomes the Wicked Witch, Kunis spent a considerable portion of her time astride her flying broom; the film features a number of flying scenes, all of which Kunis performed without a stunt double. She says she wasn’t worried about these scenes at all, having worked with the stunt coordinator previously. “Scott Rogers and I did two movies back-to-back, he was the stunt coordinator for Ted; he allowed me to drive like a crazy maniac when he probably shouldn’t have, so at that point I was like, Scott’s crazy, I trust him.” The resulting scenes show a daredevil Wicked Witch who roars around Oz, swooping very close to the heads of the citizens before ascending high into the air. “When we went on to to shoot Oz,” Kunis remarks, “I thought, this is fine, I’ve jumped out of planes before, this can’t be worse. And it’s not… unless you happen to be afraid of heights. You’re 30-35 feet in the air, you’re strung up on multiple wires, and should anything go wrong, there’s an emergency system.”

All in all, viewers may be surprised to learn how much of Oz the Great and Powerful was actually filmed on set rather than being created in the computer.

Last night Jeff White was at the Academy awards, waiting to hear if his work for visual effects had received the top honors. He and his team at Industrial Light & Magic — along with Janek Sirrs, Guy Williams, Dan Sudick — had worked tirelessly to bring The Avengers to life on the big screen, helping Joss Whedon realize his vision. Jeff and his team had received the films only Oscar nomination in the category of Visual Effects.

Now, we catch up with Joe Letteri, Senior Visual Effects Supervisor on The Hobbit movies, who geeks out with GeekDad about motion capture, 3-D, motion blur, the 48 frames-per-second debate, and how his latest innovations affect the always astonishing field of digital effects.

Letteri is also the director of Weta Digital, in Wellington, New Zealand, where his leadership has helped make the studio one of world’s best visual effects houses. His work has earned him four Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects — for the films Avatar, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and King Kong. He has also received the Academy’s Technical Achievement Award for co-developing the subsurface scattering technique which helps create realistic rendering of translucent materials, like skin, that brought Gollum to life. Continue Reading “Hobbit Week: A Geek Out With Hobbit Effects Wiz Joe Letteri” »

Rick Baker poses with some of his creations from Men in Black III at the unveiling of his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Master special effects makeup wizard Rick Baker was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Friday. The unveiling of Baker’s star, which is located in front of the Guinness Museum just east of Highland Boulevard, took place at 11:30 Friday morning. The guests included Dick Smith (The Exorcist), Guillermo Del Toro (Hellboy), Barry Sonnenfeld (Men in Black), Andy Garcia, and Bob Burns (Tracy the Gorilla).

Leron Gubler, President of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, also presented Baker with a certificate from the Los Angeles city council proclaiming November 30, 2012, to be Rick Baker Day. Both Del Toro and Sonnenfeld spoke about the unique talent and vision that Baker brings to each project. Some of the aliens Baker created for Men in Black III were on display as demonstration of his talent. Baker was also presented with two certificates from the Guinness Book of World Records at the event; he was recognized for winning the most Academy Awards and for earning more Oscar nominations than anyone in movie history. Baker has been nominated for Academy Awards for Best Make-up a record twelve times; he has won seven, for An American Werewolf in London (1981), Harry and the Hendersons (1987), Ed Wood (1994), The Nutty Professor (1996), Men in Black (1997), How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000), and The Wolfman (2010). He also won an Emmy for his work on The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974), in which he aged Cicely Tyson from age 23 to 110.

After the presentation and several interviews for various media, while most people were packing up to leave, Baker spent at least a half-hour signing autographs and posing for photos with the hundreds of fans who braved the rain to attend the event, including a contingent from one of the local makeup schools who all showed up wearing their own original creations.

While he was busy with fans, I took the opportunity to talk to his daughter, Veronica Baker, an assistant in the development department at J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot production company. I asked her about growing up with a house full of monsters. “I guess I accepted it as normal; it wasn’t until I was older that I thought, not everyone makes this big of a deal on Halloween; it was just a part of my life that there were always creatures around– Gremlins, Harry from Harry and the Hendersons, the occasional monster.” I asked if Baker had ever worked on something that actually frightened her; she told me “plenty; there were plenty of things that I’m still too scared to see. It was hard for me to watch The Ring, and I didn’t see American Werewolf in London until I was older, and that’s now one of my favorites. Videodrome is next on my list, and it’s a crime that I haven’t seen it yet. Luckily, he’s done a balance, with things like The Grinch, and Harry, and Mighty Joe Young, where growing up that wasn’t too much for me to handle.”

In the near future, in classrooms across America, kids will answer the question, “What did you do this summer?” For some kids in the Portland, Oregon, they will respond, “I went to special effects camp.” This year the Northwest Film Center’s School of Film put a special effects session in their Film Camp. By the end of the week, students had a short one to two minute film, most of which included alien spaceships and explosions.

The class was taught by Co (Colin) O’Neill. Before picking up his current gig teaching film-making at the Art Institute of Portland and Northwest Film Center, O’Neill was a digital audio tech for Skywalker Sound, where he worked on movies like Fight Club, Galaxy Quest and the Star Wars episode which shall not be named. He has also made two of his own films Forge and Decrypter. I sat down recently with O’Neill and talked about sci-fi film camp and teaching kids to make movies.

Erik Wecks: Co, I just sat down and watched all the student films generated from this really great class. What a hoot! You can see that some of these kids really have some innate talent. Tell me about the students you taught. Where do they come from, and how do they end up at film camp making special effects?

Co O’Neill: The students come from all over the area. Some drive in over an hour to come to the Northwest Film Center here in Portland for these camp sessions. The Film Center has a great reputation for summer camps, so many of these kids had been to the animation classes previous years. I think the really young kids, the tweens, are pumped about everything. Show them a few clicks and they’re off and running. The teens are a tougher group because they understand the difference between pro quality and beginner, and they come in with ambitious concepts. Patience is the challenge there.

Wecks: So were you interested in film since you were a kid? How did you end up wanting to be a filmmaker?

O’Neill: It really began when I was four, and Dad woke me up in the middle of the night because the 1933 King Kong was on TV. It was like 1am. After the movie was over, he turned to me and said, “Don’t tell your mother.” It was the ultimate bonding experience. I was deeply infected with the film virus after that. He took me to animation festivals, bought books, took me to the library, and checked out 16mm Charlie Chaplin films and old crime films… This was 1975 so information wasn’t easy to come by. He took me to Jaws, and, even though I was deeply traumatized (in a good way), I wanted to know how the shark worked because I could tell it was fake. Then Star Wars came out and sci fi has been my thing ever since. A few years later, we moved. Ten is a tough age to drop into a new town in late July. All the sports leagues and summer classes were already rolling. Dad pulled out his old Super 8 camera and checked out a book on animation. I had a head for visual storytelling because he had started me on movies so early. My first film was a 2 minute stop motion vengeance film.

Wecks: Your film Forge seemed to be pretty well respected for its effects. How did you come to make a micro-budget sci-fi movie?

O’Neill: I had been writing pitches for a producer for the SyFy channel, and all they wanted were monster movies. I thought, where’s the science? I liked Soderberg’s take on Solaris and Aronofsky’s The Fountain and Duncan Jones’ Moon. Forge is kind of a mish-mash of those films mixed with some nanotech and mind-reading stuff I heard on NPR’s Science Friday. Character-centered hard science fiction is pretty cheap to make. I wanted to make something for myself and not worry about marketing or return-on-investment. So I did some research, banged out a script, and called up some former students to help. Extremely rewarding experience.

Wecks: So how did you go from making a science fiction movie to teaching at movie camp?

O’Neill: Earlier in the year I had juried a youth film festival and saw how many of the kids had tried doing some vfx with varying success. I approached the head of the school, Ellen Thomas, about teaching vfx to kids as a way to get them interested in technology as a narrative device, but also as a way to help out kids who are already interested in sci fi movies and don’t know where to start. I had been making films and teaching filmmaking for years, but on Forge I realized the basic principles of vfx could be taught to anyone.

Wecks: So give me some nuts and bolts on what the kids actually did in a special effects class at film camp? What did you teach them and what software did they use and explore?

O’Neill: We used Adobe After Effects and did basic compositing and animation. First, we looked at examples of compositing and built up a vfx shot with layers. Sky, city, spaceships, lasers. Then we set key frames and moved the elements around. Pretty much 2D cutout animation to begin with. The second day, we shot the students on a green screen. I was impressed with how even the 11 year-olds immediately understood how green screen keying works. With those simple concepts, they were able to create pretty elaborate shots. And some even completed fully fleshed out narratives. Some of the advanced teens got into doing 3D CG with Blender. Blender is a free download.

Wecks: Some of the kids clearly have been thinking about film. There were a couple of the student videos which really stood out to me. The 3D animation was short but that student at least was thinking about designing a shot which included a moving camera, a three dimensional background, lighting and story. Pretty good for a teen in about 30 seconds. Others seem to have thought a bit about how to string visuals into a narrative. Was there a moment which surprised you the most? Was there a kid who really reached for something?

O’Neill: There were two of those moments for me. One of the tween girls went from knowing zero to making a smart little short that ended up fairly polished. Here was someone who went from being quiet and sitting in the back to having people ask her how she did certain things. You could tell she was proud of her project. The other was another younger student who came in very advanced and did an exploding car complete with a vfx breakdown sequence. It was clear that he wasn’t just following a tutorial. He really understood what he was doing and was ecstatic that someone knew what he was talking about. It was as though nobody had ever spoken his language until that class. My experience with many young people is that they will reach a certain level of achievement and sit back, but this guy was starving for more information. He’ll go far if people support him.

Wecks: So if a kid wanted to get into making movies what advice would you give them? And what practical steps could they use to make their dream a reality?

O’Neill: First practical step is to get your hands on a camera. It really doesn’t matter what the quality is. All it needs to do is capture moving images. Most cheap still cameras have a video mode, that will do! A computer helps, but you can edit in camera if you don’t have access to a computer. But even a junky laptop can edit video. You don’t have to worry about lighting or sound or acting when you’re getting started. Just start shooting. Compare your work to movies that you like. Try to match the framing with your camera. Storyboarding helps explain your ideas to others and helps you plan out your shots. Practice your story structure and keep it simple. Beginning, middle, and end. Whether documentary or fiction, it helps if your audience knows what’s happening.

My advice is simply to make stuff. Make each project better than the previous. Sometimes you can get people to be in your movies, and sometimes you’re all alone, but stick with it. There are all kinds of famous people out there making huge summer blockbusters, but they all started as kids who didn’t give up.

Wecks: Is there anything that I missed? What do you want to make sure our audiences understand?

O’Neill: That the most crucial element in creating media arts as a young person is some kind of support. A teacher, parent, family friend, etc. A kid needs guidance through the process and exposure to the resources. There was a point where my dad couldn’t take me any further, and I think that frustrated him. We didn’t have any film schools or other opportunities for kids in our little town in Wisconsin. All he could do was suggest films to watch and give me books. If I had a place like the Film Center (or at least the internet), who knows where I’d be? If you have a daughter or son who wants to be a filmmaker or vfx artist or animator or even writer, feed them information. Kids will change their focus a lot, but it doesn’t mean they won’t circle back around. It’s tough because parents want their kids to have realistic dreams. Not everyone can be a film director or CG animator, but a lot of people get there in spite of the challenges. If nothing else, kids learn critical thinking and informational structure which makes life easier for them in the long run.

The Great Hall of Hogwarts, photo courtesy of Warner Brothers. All other photos by Nathan Barry unless stated

It is a good time to be a fan of the boy wizard right now. Earlier in the week, the eBook versions of all seven Harry Potter novels were finally made available through the pottermore.com website, and this weekend the doors of The Making of Harry Potter studio tour will at last be opened with a star-studded red carpet event at the Leavesden Studios where all eight movies were made (you can watch a live stream of the event here).

Concept art for the start of the tour, image courtesy of Thinkwell

From 1939 until 1994 the Leavesden Aerodrome was home to a local airfield and factory, producing fighter planes during the Second World War and Rolls-Royce aircraft engine in later years. The factory closed in 1994 and the hangars were transformed into soundstages and construction workshops, the airfield turned into a fully functioning backlot and the new center for film production in the UK was born. It was home for many film production, including several James Bond movies, before a relatively new production company came there to make a film about young boy who discovers he is a wizard on his 11th birthday.

Painting Diagon Alley, image courtesy of Thinkwell

Over the next ten years, the cast and crew of over 3,000 in total inhabited more and more of the Leavesden studios as the popularity of the books and films grew and grew. The three young stars lived there, grew up there, went to school there and turned into adults on those stages. When all the films were completed the future of the studio complex was very uncertain until Warner Brothers decided to invest a huge amount of money in both the local area and the British film industry in general, by turning part of the site into London’s newest tourist attraction, The Warner Brothers Studio Tour, whilst keeping plenty of other stages and studios around to be used as the base for their UK film productions. They hired Thinkwell, an experiential design and development firm based in Burbank, who also created the opening event for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Florida, to design and produce the tour taking the iconic sets, costumes, props and creatures, and creating an authentic, immersive behind-the-scenes look at how the films were made. It’s taken nearly two years to get there, but it finally opens to the public this weekend.

The Cupboard Under the Stairs

The tour is based around a timed entry system. You have to buy your tickets in advance (£28 for adults and £21 for children) and then turn up within your 30 minute slot, but after that you can spend as long as you like wandering around. The journey begins in the foyer, with a flying Ford Anglia hanging from the ceiling and the walls decorated with huge photos of the cast, together with a few props. A small queue forms as everyone in your time slot gathers together by the set of the cupboard under the stairs, and after a while we were ushered into a room with several vertical TV screens showing Potter movie posters from around the world. Before long the screens began to show a short video sequence showing the rise of Harry’s popularity, how the production team came across the stories, and the tremendous success of the books and films worldwide. Continue Reading “Diving Into The Making of Harry Potter Studio Tour” »

Derek Van Gorder and Otto Stockmeier have a dream: To create a science fiction film, but without the space-age effects.

In other words, to eschew the digital, and favor the analog.

Their movie C, which follows the story of an idealistic flight officer who hijacks a spaceship during an interplanetary cold war, aims to “create a dynamic science-fiction film using classic, in-camera special effects.” That means their space ships are cobbled-together bits from plastic models and other junk, and cemented together. They are physically moved across a star field — in this case, a stretched-out piece of black cloth poked with holes. The production is about as low-tech as they get. Just like 2011: A Space Odyssey and other ground-breaking SF movies, before the computer age, back when they made movies with things, not pixels.

As they explain in their Kickstarter campaign, “Working with optical effects like these require long hours and a lot of patience, but we believe that this process produces a film with more atmosphere, greater believability, and a sense of timelessness.” On his behind-the-scenes production blog, Van Gorder says the color palate was inspired by the neon colors of 1970s and ’80s sci-fi, anime, and video games.

Otto Stockmeier and Derek Van Gorder, producers of "C"(Photo courtesy of the filmmakers).

The two work as a creative team, with Van Gorder taking on the photography, and Stockmeier focusing on production; they collaborate on the writing and direction. For this project, Van Gorder will be credited as Writer/Director and Stockmeier as Writer/Creative Producer, since, as Stockmeier told me, the concept originated from Derek and he is more the sci-fi geek.

But first they have to raise the money to make the film. They’ve shot some preliminary footage for a trailer (which you can view here). Their hope is to get enough money to make a short, or even a feature length film. They told me that what you see in the trailer is just test footage. Their plan is to build all new sets and shoot everything new for the short (which would be 20-30 minutes) and the feature (approximately 90 minutes).

I had the chance to ask Derek and Otto a few questions about the progress of C, and what it’s going to take to make their dream come true.

Gilsdorf: Tell me what stage you’re at in the production and what your ideal production timeline would be?

Stockmeier: At the moment we are about to make the transition from fundraising to pre-production. Already a lot of the groundwork has been completed — lighting tests, most of the casting, etc. — so we should be ready to start building sets by the end of January, filming the miniatures in March, and be in the editing room by early April. That being said, if we can raise enough money to expand the short into a feature, we would be adding time to production.

Goo is a big part of childhood. It is a consistency that runs through and across and down our children’s lives (and bodies). At times unidentified substances are found oozing out of holes in noses or worse! The greatest of goo has been captured by the gaming community, in World of Goo – but the Goo I want to talk to you about is the stuff that you buy in novelty shops, or get as a prize at the local fair after not quite winning the major carnival prize.

My son recently acquired just such a tub of Goo in a novelty bag from a local fair. His fascination and interest in this simple red polymer reminded me of just how little children need sometimes to kick their imagination into overdrive. He was putting it on surfaces, playing practical jokes and generally pushing the material to its limits…which was when I found him in special effects mode.

The above photo is my boys first foray into the mythbuster world of special effects and movie prosthetics. Somehow, he managed to manipulate the Goo to ooze right over his hand creating a beautiful comic book effect like some tight fitting superhero glove or bio-tech ooze that clings to your body and aids you in some way by healing, providing extra strength or who knows.

So, now it begins…my search for other random household items that can be used for special effects. Suggestions welcome in the comments below folks. What have your kids been doing recently that is gooey and special effects worthy?

This book pick is in anticipation of whatever creepy gross thing my three boys will think up for Halloween this year. Some years they have fun freaking out the neighbor kids with my extra prosthetic leg (and lots of fake blood) and some years they leave my leg in the closet and do their own thing.

But every year there is a need for fake stuff. Fake blood. Fake vomit. Fake scars. It can get expensive if you’re buying these lovely products in a holiday supply store. Most geek kids out there would rather make their own concoctions anyway, right? So I have the perfect new book for you.

Through the years I’ve gathered recipes from magazines for some of the fake stuff featured in this book. But I’ve never seen such a great compilation of every possible fake gross thing you might ever need. This book is packed with great pictures and easy directions. All of the recipes call for ordinary household items.

One summer, when I was 16 or so, I borrowed a video camera and a friend and I made a very short, very dumb monster movie. There may be better ways to spend your time during summer vacation, but I can’t think of them right now. I haven’t seen the video in 20 years, but I’ll never forget making it.

To help you and/or your Geeklets get started on your own films — and hopefully do better than I did — I asked writer, director and SFX artist Matt Cunningham for some tips: from better lighting to better fake blood.

Matt Cunningham (and spinning head prop) on set of Troma slasher film "Decampitated." All photos courtesy Matt Cunningham.

Q: Did you make your own movies when you were a kid? What were they like? I assume monsters were involved.

DM: Yes, I did. I used the old Super 8 format and shot a lot of them without sound. I couldn’t afford a sound sync machine to go along with the cameras. I would find old cameras in thrift stores and buy them up. They would be short movies, usually a roll per movie (which was about 3 minutes long). I didn’t know how to edit when I was young so I planned the shots out in sequence.

Many of my home movies had that Star Wars meets monsters feel to it. When I got a hold of a video camera, my cousins and I would make all kinds of movies. Zombies, Killer Clowns, Halloween knock offs and my favorite was Phantom of the Laundry. The Phantom was the one who took your socks or clothes and then used them against you. Some people faced horrible deaths by dirty socks. A lot of these movies are where I learned to do makeup FX.Continue Reading “Make a Monster Movie this Summer” »